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13 years

Today, my husband and I celebrate 13 years of marriage. That seems like a pretty decent amount of time to me. I suppose there are people that have many more years than that on us, but it's over a decade, so I am giving us a gold star. At this point in our lives, we have known each other for more years than we haven't. So what does thirteen years look like? It looks like love and loss and laughter. Family growing, seemingly endless nights of soothing babies. Watching those babies reach milestone after milestone, borrowing your clothes, growing taller than you. Surprise babies that restart the cycle. Moving then moving again....moving some more. Funerals and birthdays. Lousy cooking, home repairs, bills, dirty dishes. It means ten extra pounds, and then maybe ten more. Clothes left in the dryer and crazy dreams and plans. Inside jokes and shared life stories.
What does it look like in a more literal sense? It looks like going to great lengths and stress to have a day away together, for the first time in over three years. Coming home to find a toddler already in your bed...a bed covered in a mish mash of blankets because aforementioned toddler peed on your comforter. It means learning the ants have made their way into your house, and because they clearly lack any sense of taste, are swarming the litter box. It means walking into a kitchen full of water catching bowls, and learning that the bath tub upstairs leaked through the kitchen ceiling. Pretty much what fairy tales are made of, right? I think if newlyweds could see what their endorphin clouded euphoria would eventually give way to, they would probably run in terror. But at the end of the day, as you are setting your alarm to wake you in about half of the hours of sleep that you would like to have, if you can still make jokes and laugh with the person that keeps you awake with his snoring, I would totally call that a fairy tale ending.

Happy anniversary to the man that has stuck around as I grew a tiny bit crazier with each passing year.....and considering the level I started at, that is a scary thought.

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Melodee Tonti is a Southern California photographer specializing in telling your stories through documentary photography and lifestyle photography sessions, in-home or on location. Available for sessions in Corona, Chino Hills, Riverside, Eastvale, and the rest of the Inland Empire, Orange County, Los Angeles, Temecula, Murrieta, and travel sessions to Prescott, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, and surrounding areas.